“Becom­ing a leader is syn­ony­mous with becom­ing your­self. It is pre­cisely that sim­ple, and it is also that dif­fi­cult.” ~ War­ren Bennis

Build­ing lead­ers from the inside out.

Today I’m hon­ored to share with you Dr. Holly Latty-Mann, pres­i­dent and co-founder of The Lead­er­ship Trust®.  The Lead­er­ship Trust is a train­ing orga­ni­za­tion based in Durham, North Car­olina.  Holly, along with the late Dr. Jim Farr, cre­ated this unique train­ing orga­ni­za­tion in 1998. Of spe­cial note, is that Dr. Farr was the ini­tial found­ing direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Cre­ative Lead­er­ship, back in the late 1960s and sold his pre­vi­ous firm, Farr Asso­ciates, mak­ing The Lead­er­ship Trust his last lead­er­ship initiative.

The basis behind the train­ing that Holly and her group offer is that lead­er­ship is built from the inside out through a highly psy­cho­log­i­cally dri­ven process.  Regarded as life-changing, nearly all past par­tic­i­pants have called this the best train­ing they’ve ever had – both per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally.  And this is evi­denced in the many video and writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als of their grad­u­ates, found at The Lead­er­ship Trust web­site.  I encour­age you to check these out, even just for the inspi­ra­tion they offer, given they do not fit the norm.  It is so worth reading/viewing some of these – just take a cou­ple of min­utes to really let this all soak in.

Holly has cre­ated a learn­ing envi­ron­ment that truly pro­motes fun­da­men­tal change, in a safe and car­ing envi­ron­ment.  With a rich his­tory of alliances that include Duke University’s Fuqua School of Busi­ness, their Coach K Cen­ter for Lead­er­ship and Ethics (COLE) as well as Wake For­est University’s Bab­cock Grad­u­ate School of Man­age­ment, The Lead­er­ship Trust cur­rently enjoys an infor­mal part­ner­ship with NC State’s Orga­ni­za­tional Behav­ior pro­gram where their col­lab­o­ra­tion has pro­duced research find­ings on lead­er­ship behav­iors that work and don’t work.

Please join me in wel­com­ing Holly here today. 

1. Tell us a lit­tle bit about who “you” are (fam­ily, career, any spe­cial life expe­ri­ences you’d like to share, etc.)
Lance, I notice you ask about fam­ily first before career in your ques­tion, and I say you have your pri­or­i­ties right!

While most peo­ple tend to offer pos­i­tive spins when asked about specifics of who they are (fam­ily, spe­cial life expe­ri­ences, etc.), I’ve found those sen­sa­tional life events, includ­ing the ones where I made mis­takes, have turned out to be won­der­ful train­ing grounds for not only help­ing me become my best, but also help­ing oth­ers do the same.  So here are some spe­cial life expe­ri­ences that molded and shaped me because of my responses to them: I lost my brother Michael when I was almost 3, and he was almost 9. Michael was my every­thing. My father was an alco­holic, albeit a suc­cess­ful busi­ness exec­u­tive. That’s because his drink­ing started when he came home in the evenings.  I went steady with Billy Graham’s son for two years in high school, but he broke up with me because I was a “goody two-shoes,” and he had dis­cov­ered “wild” girls dur­ing his prep school years at Stony Brook.  Years fol­low­ing my divorce at the age of 30, I saved myself from a sec­ond mar­riage. Don’t laugh when you hear my doc­toral dis­ser­ta­tion was on mate selec­tion. After years of being mar­ried to my com­pany, I’m now finally ready again. Con­tin­u­ing to speak to spe­cial life expe­ri­ences, I’ve had one super­nat­ural expe­ri­ence that has nur­tured a meta­phys­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion to my faith. Another “super­nat­ural” expe­ri­ence was my los­ing half of my hear­ing overnight in 1992 due to a virus. But most impor­tantly as a result of work­ing steadily on myself over time, I can say with grat­i­tude in my heart that I am a happy, secure per­son who loves life and believes the best in humankind! No, I am not naïve. I have watched thou­sands of peo­ple go from anger, despair, inse­cu­rity, arro­gance, and self­ish­ness to happy and peace­ful. I am a true believer that peo­ple change, and my pas­sion is play­ing a role in sup­port­ing mean­ing­ful, last­ing change in others.

You’ll learn from this link about my career, edu­ca­tional back­ground, and what I do in the name of show­ing lead­ers how to inspire and moti­vate. It was only this past year that I asked all fac­ulty mem­bers to add what they do for fun in the last para­graph.  As for me, that includes for­eign travel (52 for­eign coun­tries so far), play­ing the piano, play­ing ten­nis, hik­ing, and most fun of all, bik­ing! I feel like a free child as soon as I start to peddle!

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Holly, I love the approach you took with this ques­tion.  Life has bumps for all of us, and those bumps along our jour­ney really can lead to last­ing change.  You are doing won­der­ful things on all lev­els, and I’m sure that’s in part to what your past expe­ri­ences have taught you. 

2. You are the pres­i­dent and co-founder of a pretty inno­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tion.  Tell us briefly about “The Lead­er­ship Trust” and what it is? 
How about our mis­sion state­ment for starters? The Lead­er­ship Trust® is an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to sup­port on a global basis the cre­ation, devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of highly effec­tive, high integrity lead­er­ship serv­ing the ulti­mate well-being of all per­sons everywhere.

3. What is the deeper pur­pose of your orga­ni­za­tion?
Our deeper pur­pose is to sup­port the growth of the human spirit in order to con­tribute toward a kinder, gen­tler world.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  The human spirit – what a deeply mean­ing­ful pur­pose.  Holly, I think this answer alone speaks to just how “right” what you are doing is.  The more con­nected with our deeper self, the more we see life through the lens of human­ity and what is pos­si­ble!  What a great place to work toward, and you get to help oth­ers do this every day – how awe­some!

4. Who is your typ­i­cal stu­dent in these pro­grams?  Who can this apply to?
A typ­i­cal pro­gram has a diver­sity of stu­dents, so it’s dif­fi­cult to say we have a typ­i­cal stu­dent. We do have more male par­tic­i­pants except dur­ing the sum­mer months. And it’s funny you should ask this ques­tion.  We are await­ing results from an inde­pen­dent research firm who gath­ered data over sev­eral weeks to offer us a pro­file of the “typ­i­cal stu­dent,” so that we can tar­get that audi­ence. Truth­fully, our most robust work­shops have peo­ple play­ing dif­fer­ent roles (CEO, IT, HR, CFO, tech­ni­cian, project man­ager, etc.) from dif­fer­ent indus­tries  (seri­ously, you name it) of any size (any­thing from a Mom/Pop enter­prise of one per­son to huge global cor­po­ra­tions). We also have on occa­sion some­one in school, between jobs, or fac­ing retire­ment. Because these pro­grams are per­son­al­ized, mean­ing one size does not fit all, we encour­age this diver­sity because effec­tive lead­er­ship involves relat­ing to peo­ple rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous tiers and roles within any organization.

Lances’ Com­men­tary:  Holly, I know your class sizes are very small – and I’m sure this facil­i­tates a very highly per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ence for every­one going through your pro­grams.  That’s what I think is so unique about this, is that  it’s some­thing we can all get some­thing from.  It’s lead­er­ship.  And yet it’s so much more than that, on a per­sonal level, and how really so many of your par­tic­i­pants have real­ized a myr­iad of life-changing  ben­e­fits both pro­fes­sion­ally and per­son­ally.  And I think that really speaks to the impor­tance you place on mak­ing this truly a life-changing expe­ri­ence for everyone.

5.  You do one thing (or a sub­set of that one thing) and do it very well.  Lead­er­ship train­ing is your sole focus.  What makes your train­ing unique? 
Our unique self-awareness work­shop (SAW) that is sub­sumed within our hall­mark 5-day pro­gram offers processes on the emo­tional intel­li­gence aspects of lead­er­ship that explains our highly unusual tes­ti­mo­ni­als. Our grad­u­ates on video also talk about how we’re dif­fer­ent.  Sec­ondly, our unique 360 feed­back process has every­one primed to give their best to the Self-Awareness Work­shop that starts the evening of the first day. The atten­tion to group cul­ture, keep­ing it safe with each person’s dig­nity held intact, is key to how a group of strangers bond into a tight team within 28 hours from onset.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  The tes­ti­mo­ni­als are so affirm­ing to read and lis­ten to.  And this idea of bring­ing together a group of strangers and cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment that builds real and strong bonds — I just really sense how this adds so much to this experience!

6.  Self-awareness is a big part of the learn­ing devel­op­ment that goes on with par­tic­i­pants attend­ing your pro­grams.  Tell us more about the impor­tance of this.
Well, if you don’t know, you can’t fix. And if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, then you’ll keep get­ting what you’ve been get­ting. Root cause to what­ever is hold­ing us back tends to be housed in the sub­con­scious (your unaware­ness). It’s a mat­ter of bring­ing cru­cial mate­r­ial from your unaware­ness into your con­scious aware­ness so that you can make choices regard­ing what to do about it. It’s a rare per­son who doesn’t want to change that which is hold­ing him or her back. The biggest out­come in terms of emo­tion is joy along with a pro­found sense of relief.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Or peace, maybe…  This whole idea of being more self-aware, I believe is hugely impor­tant.  In get­ting to know our­selves bet­ter, we become more open to the world around us.

7.  I am fas­ci­nated by the many tes­ti­mo­ni­als you have.  Specif­i­cally, how pro­gram par­tic­i­pants draw such deep mean­ing out of your pro­gram.  Is there some­thing spe­cific that’s a real eye opener for these peo­ple? 
Yes, there is. I once play­fully told an inter­viewer who asked the same ques­tion, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”  A bet­ter response is this:  If I were to tell you, it would con­t­a­m­i­nate an oth­er­wise opti­mal expe­ri­ence. This is akin to the notion if we humans would just get our­selves out of the way of divine inter­ven­tion, we may stand a greater chance to grow and prosper.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Ha!  I’m glad you’re not going to kill me, Holly!!  This reminds me of a retreat I attended a few years ago, where there were sev­eral things that occurred which I was unaware of, and that just made the whole expe­ri­ence that much more mean­ing­ful.  So, the bot­tom line is:  sign up, right!

8. Tell us one unex­pected thing that has hap­pened to you, from going down this path of start­ing the “Lead­er­ship Trust”?
My co-founding part­ner died just days before our sec­ond work­shop. This was dur­ing the time we were in part­ner­ship with Wake For­est Bab­cock Grad­u­ate School of Man­age­ment. So the dean asked if I would do both Jim’s part and my own. Not only did I take on that chal­lenge, but dur­ing the 3^rd day of the work­shop, they sent a limo to take me to the church to deliver my eulogy on my co-founding part­ner and friend, only to turn around and fin­ish the work­shop. The eval­u­a­tions were unusu­ally favor­able and strong, and I later learned WFU had  won­dered if it was because of the emo­tion of the inter­rup­tion. Months and months passed with the same level of tes­ti­mo­nial inten­sity which inspired talks of fran­chis­ing this pro­gram to offer nation­ally, even globally.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  An emo­tional response can def­i­nitely trig­ger bring­ing out the greater good in every­one.  This reminds me of for­mer Green Bay Packer quar­ter­back Brett Favre a few years back – play­ing before a national audi­ence only a cou­ple of days after unex­pect­edly los­ing his father, and hav­ing one of his great­est games ever.  Yet, the truth is, you’ve main­tained this same deep con­nec­tion with your par­tic­i­pants, and I really believe that speaks to the qual­ity of this pro­gram, and the ded­i­ca­tion of you and your staff to make this as mean­ing­ful as it has been for every­one.

9. If you had to pick one thing as your great­est achieve­ment, what would it be (and why)?
I am involved in ani­mal wel­fare and have been since the early 1980s, and while I’m sure my dona­tions and let­ters (includ­ing let­ters to the edi­tor) have made a dif­fer­ence, I once was instru­men­tal in sav­ing lit­er­ally hun­dreds of dogs from inhu­mane treatment/death.
Why did I choose this as my great­est achieve­ment? I value all life, and I guess it was the enor­mity of this project and the nature of the pain these ani­mals were sub­jected to suf­fer­ing.  It’s impor­tant to add that this achieve­ment would not have hap­pened at all had it not been for the power of prayer, and how the solu­tion could not have been attrib­uted to coincidence.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Holly, I love this achieve­ment you’ve listed.  It can be easy to look at acco­lades we’ve recieved, or pres­tige we’ve achieved.  Deep down, though, what really mat­ters is human­ity, dig­nity, caring…basic prin­ci­ples within us all.  Your help­ing to save so many ani­mals from a life of mis­ery – what a gift not only to those ani­mals, but also to humankind.  Through your actions, oth­ers have been lifted up in what our core val­ues are.  And that’s pretty wonderful!

10.  Going back sev­eral years, I know that you co-founded this orga­ni­za­tion with Dr. James Farr.  And then he sud­denly passed away after your open­ing.  Were these dif­fi­cult days, for you to con­tinue on?  Or were you inspired by what Dr. Farr had helped to cre­ate?
These were very dif­fi­cult days, mainly in light of it how Jim died a lit­tle more than a year before 9/11 hit, and peo­ple were not trav­el­ing, and con­tracts for Gray­lyn Inter­na­tional Con­fer­ence Cen­ter had been signed with painful penal­ties attached for can­cel­la­tions. Fur­ther­more, Dr. Farr had made arrange­ments with WFU to bring to a close our part­ner­ship after 18 months had gone by – and wouldn’t you know this was only days before 9/11! So here I am on my own not sure how to run a com­pany, much less make one grow. Inter­est­ingly, I had an advi­sory board telling me to bring in an Exec­u­tive Direc­tor to run things for me, but the Trust didn’t have the monies for any of their sug­ges­tions, and I was so naïve at the time I didn’t even know the right ques­tions to ask of this board. I had no fam­ily nearby to help me, and my hear­ing impair­ment made it next to impos­si­ble to net­work at social gath­er­ings.  It was a low point in my career, and it lasted for sev­eral years.

So what pulled me through? I felt a call­ing to do this work – it was that strong. And indeed what Jim and I had cre­ated together was all the inspi­ra­tion I needed to never give up. 

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  The human spirit at work!  Holly, thank you for shar­ing about these dif­fi­cult days.  What you have today is a sure sign of your per­se­ver­ance, your ded­i­ca­tion to mak­ing our world a bet­ter place, and your real belief in the mes­sage your orga­ni­za­tion is delivering. 

11. Deep-down, Holly, what makes you, “you”?  And what does a typ­i­cal day away from the “Lead­er­ship Trust” involve?
My pas­sion for life, a joie de vivre is a big part of who I am. Per­haps what makes me “Holly” is like a recipe, and all of us humans can boast a unique recipe. My ingre­di­ents would include com­pas­sion, courage, ethics, gen­tle­ness, sta­mina, ser­vice, intu­ition, humil­ity, indus­try, play­ful­ness, and adven­ture. I believe I am as accept­ing and non­judg­men­tal with myself as I am with oth­ers. I see the best in myself no dif­fer­ently than how I see the best in others.

Typ­i­cal day away from The Lead­er­ship Trust® usu­ally involves both the mun­dane and the fun side of life. Mun­dane is main­tain­ing house and yard and all the errands that are a part of that. I have won­der­ful friends, top qual­ity friends, authen­tic “no airs about them” friends, friends with great depth who love to poke fun at life so as not to take our­selves too seri­ously. I am an avid reader and love word games,  and work my cross­word puz­zles in ink. I love stay­ing fit while I enjoy the great out-of-doors. I am blessed being able to spend ample time with my spir­ited 91-year-old mother, an amaz­ing woman who is extremely active to this day. I have an unshake­able faith and am for­tu­nate to have found a church that is not elit­ist in its out­look on the human race. I enjoy sup­port­ing my church in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways. I love my cat “Romeow” whom I res­cued  (despite greater appre­ci­a­tion for dogs’ personalities…sorry, Romeow!). Oh, and I’m writ­ing to com­plete my first book this sum­mer, “Lead­ers Stripped Naked: The Power of Expo­sure” (I hope this doesn’t scare any­one away!)!

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  What a won­der­ful pre­scrip­tion for life!  Life is about liv­ing.  In all the ways that are mean­ing­ful to each one of us.  Holly, your “recipe” for life is what really draws me to you, and what you offer.  And I love the name of your cat – Romeow – how creative!  

And you have a book com­ing out, that’s very excit­ing.  And that name, no – we won’t let it scare any­one away!

Clos­ing Thoughts:  Holly, thank you for shar­ing so openly here today.  You have cre­ated some­thing very spe­cial in The Lead­er­ship Trust.  Help­ing peo­ple to become more aware of them­selves, and really let out that leader within is such a great thing for our world.  And you seem so bal­anced at where you are in your life right now, which I believe is an impor­tant part to over­all per­sonal health on so many levels.

And I’m tempted to pack up my bike and come for a visit!  I love to get out and ride the trails!

For any­one inter­ested in learn­ing more about the Lead­er­ship Trust, check out the very information-packed web­site they have.  If you have any fur­ther ques­tions, or would like more infor­ma­tion, Holly and her team can be reached at:

The Lead­er­ship Trust
Phone: 888−313−2750
Email:  info [at] leadershiptrust.org

NOTE:  There is a cur­rent spe­cial Holly is offer­ing, with 50% off the tuition for the first attendee per com­pany. Hard costs still apply. To take advan­tage of this sav­ings, you can down­load from their blog their dis­count schol­ar­ship coupon using this link.

Holly, thank you for join­ing us here today, and shar­ing a bit about you and your approach toward lead­er­ship and life!